Katy Ilonka Gero >
I'm also a poet and essayist. I write about the ocean, our looming climate crisis, my niblings, computational poetry, and the intersection and distinction of the arts and science. I'm working on a poetry manuscript called Dear Ocean. In 2020 I was named a Brooklyn Poets Fellow and I'm currently a 2020-2021 CultureHub Resident Contributing Writer.
I used to build machines and sensors. I hold a bachelors in mechanical engineering from MIT, where I recieved the Carl G. Sontheimer Prize for Excellence in Innovation and Creativity for my work on soft robotics. I worked at two amazing startups: Rest Devices (we built baby monitors) and Soofa (we built smart city furniture).
If you want to collaborate on any of the above, email me > katy@cs.columbia.edu
Computer Science Research
How we can use AI methods to encourage creativity, rather than efficiency?
How do we develop AI systems that are sensible, specific, and safe?
What are new paradigms of AI interaction that respect our feelings of ownership and agency?
CV: includes awards, invited talks, service, etc.
Google Scholar: complete paper list, citations, etc.
Candidacy Exam Materials: list of papers covered, presentation.
Full conference papers
Katy Gero, Vivian Liu, Sarah Huang, Jennifer Lee, Tim Requarth, and Lydia Chiltons. "What Makes Tweetorials Tick: How Experts Communicate Complex Topics on Twitter." in CSCW 2021 (in submission).
Katy Gero, Zahra Ashktorab, Casey Dugan, Qian Pan, James Johnson, Werner Geyer, Maria Ruiz, Sarah Miller, David R. Millen, Murray Campbell, Sadhana Kumaravel, and Wei Zhang. "Mental Models of AI Agents in a Cooperative Game Setting." in CHI 2020 ⭐ Best Paper Award ⭐. [pdf] [project page]
Katy Gero, Chris Kedzie, Jonathan Reeve, and Lydia Chilton. "Low-Level Linguistic Controls for Style Transfer and Content Preservation." in INLG 2019. [pdf] [code]
Katy Gero and Lydia Chilton. "Metaphoria: An Algorithmic Companion for Metaphor Creation." in CHI 2019. [pdf] [project page] [demo]
Workshop papers and posters
Alex Calderwood, Vivian Qiu, Katy Gero, Lydia Chilton. "How Novelists Use Generative Language Models: An Exploratory User Study." in HAI-GEN at IUI 2020. [pdf]
Katy Gero and Lydia Chilton. "How a Stylistic, Machine-Generated Thesaurus Impacts a Writer's Process." in Creativity and Cognition 2019. [pdf] [demo]
Katy Gero and Lydia Chilton. "Challenges in Finding Metaphorical Connections." in NAACL Workshop on Figurative Language Processsing 2018. [pdf] [data] [slides]
Katy Gero, Giannis Karamanolakis and Lydia Chilton. "Transfer Learning for Style-Specific Text Generation." in NeurIPS Workshop on Machine Learning for Creativity and Design 2018. [pdf] [code] [poster]
My More Mechanical Days
Biometeorological indices explain outside dwelling patterns based on Wi-Fi data
Christoph Reinhart, Jay Dhariwal, and Katy Gero
Building and Environment; 2017
| pdf
Design and analysis of a robust, low-cost, highly articulated manipulator enabled by jamming of granular media
Nadia Cheng, Maxim Lobovsky, Steven Keating, Adam Setapen, Katy Gero, and Anette Hosoi, and Karl Iagnemma
IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation; 2012
| pdf
Experimental analysis on granular materials for robotic applications
Katy Gero, Nadia Cheng, Karl Iagnemma, and Anette Hosoi
Presented at American Physical Society Meeting; 2012
| slides
